Of Idylls and Wastelands
by not my daughter
Summary: For three months, two weeks, and one day, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks sequester themselves in her little flat and enrapture themselves in each other, but all paradises have to end eventually.


For three months, two weeks, and one day, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks sequester themselves in her little flat and enrapture themselves in each other. For three months, two weeks, and one day, they open their hearts and their bodies and abandon all restraint. For three months, two weeks, and one day, they revel in their own hedonism and love.

A war blazes outside them and the death toll mounts but when they are in her flat, and she traces the shape of a crescent moon on his back or he toys with a lock of her hair, if they are overwhelmed with each others' skin and eyes and bodies, they feel that this is what matters.

"It's like paradise," she says once, when he is in her bed, his arms encircling her protectively. "An idyll." She nestles closer to him, any distance between them being entirely undesirable.

He kisses her shoulder blade in a caressing motion, his hair soft, feathering against her naked back. "Don't say that," he murmurs. When she turns her head with a question in her eyes, he explains, "after all, don't all paradises have to end eventually?"

With their history of leaving and returning that statement scares her, and she pulls away slightly out of a natural fear of being abandoned. "What are you thinking?" she asks, a tremor pulsing through her words as her heart rate accelerates.

He smiles then, looking so incredibly genuine and in love that she settles back into his arms. He shifts his body slightly, and the half moon illuminates him, casting his body in smooth angles. He takes a moment to reply, then tells her, "How for the first time in years, I'm looking forward to my future." His expression changes slightly, becoming more vulnerable. "I couldn't stand being without you," he says.

She turns to face him and kisses his jaw lightly. "This is forever," she promises. She means it, wholeheartedly. This is the way she lives and breathes the world, with one perfect moment encapsulating all of eternity. In this one second of pure happiness, she sees years of bliss and marriage, sees them growing old together. She sees them walking on canes, hobbling, grey-haired and ancient, with the stars still blazing bright in their eyes when they look at each other. When she smiles at him, and he smiles back, she knows that he sees it too.

After three months, two weeks, and two days, however, her paradise with its beautiful birds and brilliant, vivid flowers and fields becomes a barren wasteland with vultures cawing from dead trees, and she can pinpoint why, trace it all back to a missed period and a pregnancy test and a full moon. With a distressing remoteness, she watches her own joy flood away as he agonizes over the news, watches as he withdraws into himself, watches him change that night and watches the rest of their lives change with him. It's disconcerting, she thinks, how fast intimacy can morph into isolation. When he turns back into himself after the night is over, he avoids meeting her eyes, and there is an aura of withdrawal that enters their lives, slipping between them.

He never says anything to her, not directly, but she knows, just like she knew before. She can tell because the knot in her stomach clenches violently when he refuses to meet her eyes, the way his face tightens whenever she mentions the baby, so it doesn't come as a surprise the day he tells her with a characteristically evasive excuse that he can't be with her anymore and she deserves better.

Bitterly, she says, "At least think of a different excuse this time," and she has the momentary blend of pain and pleasure that comes with seeing the hurt, tormented look on his face.

She wants to throw at him those three months, two weeks and a day that they spent together in perfect happiness where doubts never entered their retreat, but one variable altered the entire equation and the result, and she knows, with a sickening, deadly certainty, that there is no going back.

Neither one of them was really made for domesticity, after all. But as he leaves, taking one last look at her, with her hands clasped instinctively over her stomach, bravely not looking directly at him but rather concentrating ferociously on the wall, he hurries away, unable to look back.

Around the room, remnants of promises and love and sex hang about the bed, the curtains, the floor. She hates that all of this happened in her flat and that as a result, she will be the one to live with the memories every day. Years of partnership and love now, in her mind, have become a future of loneliness and despair.

She doesn't look out the window to see him go, so she doesn't see the hopelessness in his eyes that mirrors hers, the way he hesitates, as if he wants to turn back, the way tears hover around his eyes, compelled by pride not to entirely fall yet unable to be entirely suppressed. She doesn't see that there are still a few seeds of paradise left, obscured by the wasteland, yet always tantalizingly present.

They both walk that night to escape thoughts of each other, sometimes in opposite directions, sometimes towards each other. She walks under gas lights in an old neighborhood, while he walks in a bustling, crime-ridden area. Connected only by the moon above them (always the moon, the root of all their problems yet brilliant in its luminosity) and a shared history, they walk as the distance between them waxes and wanes.


End file.
